SEO

I’ve discussed SEO techniques in other articles here but like anything in IT related enterprises, things are constantly changing and it’s worth keeping up to date with the criteria Google and other web search engines use to rank websites. Years ago web designers used all kinds of techniques to get better search engine results for their clients and many still profess ‘secret’ knowledge on how to achieve remarkable (but unverifiable usually) results. We used to stuff site pages with keywords and use methods to ‘fool’ what are essentially dumb computers into getting better rankings.

Of course, times change (and Google’s talented programmers have made major improvements to their page ranking ‘algorithms’) and we can no longer rely on methods of the past. As an interesting aside, I only recently discovered that the term page rank actually is named after the developer of the method, Larry Page, one of Google’s founders not ‘page’ as in web page. Thanks Wikipedia! Continue reading →

More websites are being built with WordPress now than ever before. In fact, this great content management system (CMS) is now being used by over 13% of the world’s 1,000,000 biggest websites (as at March 2011).

From my perspective, the big benefit that WordPress gives me is – time.

Any web designer will tell you that spending unproductive time in duplicating page layouts exactly so that the site design is identical on all pages is painful, especially when the client decides to make a last minute change that needs to be made on every page. It makes estimating the project time and fees very difficult and often means that shortcuts have to be taken if the project looks like going severely over budget. Continue reading →

The key to any advertising medium is to ensure you get good results for your money. A website can be one of the best advertising methods available and I believe they are becoming more cost-effective every day.

With today’s fast-paced industries, businesses without an online presence are usually left behind. Whether you plan to sell or promote your products or services online, the advantages of having a small business website are evident. Since product search and online shopping are becoming increasingly popular and convenient, millions of people search for different services and products on a daily basis. With an increasing number of people using the internet regularly, small business companies would be crazy not to take advantage of having a website as an effective and low-cost promotional tool. Continue reading →

One of the goals that we strive for constantly is to provide value for money websites. By that I don’t just mean ‘cheap’ websites, I mean good, cost-effective and simple to maintain sites.

Firstly, I’ll give you some background information about website design methods used in Australia and world-wide.

In the past – and by that I mean prior to 2005 – the vast majority of sites were designed by two methods. One school of thought used software like Microsoft FrontPage or DreamWeaver. These packages enabled users to deliver reasonably professional-looking sites without needing to understand the code that was created. The second method was to use a combination of this type of software and also very time consuming hand-coding of the ‘html’ pages that make up many websites. Continue reading →